Our first days of June and Precious things Lost

I decided a couple of days ago that I had to get a new post on this blog, but the weather started getting a little nicer here and so I have been working like a crazy woman getting the yard back in shape after a long hard winter.  It is starting to look nice, neat, and trimmed, just like I prefer.  The weather was cold and wet for so long, as you all know, and everything was behind a couple of weeks at least.  Our big tulips are just starting to look great, the lilacs haven't blossomed yet, the cherry tree has just started to blossom, and I haven't even got a thing in my garden.  Because it is so late, I won't even attempt tomatoes or corn this year.  So I will put in the other stuff tomorrow: beans, zuchinni, onions, cabbage, potatoes if I can find some. 

Leah and Lily spent the night on Friday.  They were pretty dirty little urchins when they got here, so I put them in the bathtub to get clean because I just don't know how anyone can sleep comfortably when they're as dirty as they were.  When they got out, they were squeaky cean and smelled like conditioner and lavender bubble bath.   And my bathroom floor was pretty wet from the  all the splashing and throwing wet wash cloths at each other.  You can tell they've been getting some sun.

 Something funny about Leah; she is a little paranoid about bathrooms and pottys since her Ethiopia trip.  She has a hard time going to the bathroom and is pretty private about anyone seeing her tush.  Anyway, as I was helping her to get on the potty, pretty much insisting that she go, she said indignantly, "Grandma, don't look at my bottom!"  I laughed and said OK, I won't look.  Then she said as she was getting off the potty, "Grandma, can you wipe my bottom?"  Then she proceeded to turn around and stick her bottom out for me to wipe.  So I wiped her and then she said, "the front too, grandma."  so I wiped the front too.  Later, she put on her clean panties, which had some pretty good elastic going on, and wouldn't you know it, she started getting a little twitchy and then soon asked me, "Grandma, can you get my wedgie out?"  I had to really laugh at that one.  She had to bend over and show me her wedgie.  All in just a few hours time we went from not looking to getting her wedgie out.  What a character Leah is.

The planting is continuing, even as late as it is we still have until June 10 to plant and then we take the "No Plant" option.  So Alan, Kent and Andrew are all working hard to get finished in the next couple of days.  Alan and I drove up to the Clark place on Friday or Thursday last week.  The Dry Creek, which is usually dry, was full and running down through our fields.  It was the first time I've seen it so full.  It made me want to jump in it on a tube and go for a ride.  However, the water is icy cold, as it has just come off the mountains, so I don't think I will yet.

The other pictures are of the Clark place with the Tetons in the background and one of yours truly at Highland.
I know I didn't post about Sara's and my last day in England, or the day that was supposed to be our last day, so I'm doing that now.  Our last day was supposed to be Saturday and then Sunday we would hop on the Eurostar in London and ride to Paris firstclass.  We started out the day in York, which was beautiful and made our way south to Stamford, which just happens to be one of the areas where Sara served on here mission, for those of you who didn't know.  She was excited to see the place, but when we came into Stamford, we came from a different direction and she didn't recognize hardly anything.  She saw a post office that  looked right, but that was about all.  We got to walk around for about an hour, and she tried to find something that looked familar, and finally just as we were having to get back on the bus she recognized some little buildings that she knew.  I though Stamford was beautiful.  Our guide, Julian, said it was a town that was mostly untouched by tourism and has stayed quite sheltered and so looks pretty cool.  I think Sara told me that they filmed Middlemarch there

 Sara looking on the city map to see if she reconogized anything. 

 I reconogized these cute little meat pies.

 and these strawberries.

 Oh, the beautiful flowers in England. 

 And these quaint little sideway alleys or whatever they call them. 

 This is where we were when she finally started to recognize something.  Something about cottages off in the distance.

Then we loaded up in the bus, and on the way out of town she recognized a few more places.  Hard to remember things after eighteen years.  Then we headed to Cambridge.  My idea of Cambridge was not at all what it turned out to be.  Cambridge is a bunch of colleges, the most famous of which is the King's College and Queen's college and a few others.  If you have seen the movie "Chariots of Fire", some of the runners came from Cambridge.  So we walked around there for a while and saw some good sights. 
This was a river that wound around the colleges.

 This was the front of King's College.  The picture below shows a person there in a robe checking to see if you can go in or not.  They were wearing black and purple robes. 

 This is Sara's lunch:  a Cornish Pasty.  They weren't as good as they looked. 

 Just loved this little church with the climbing rose on it, so I had to take a picture of it. 

 And this was a famous tailoring store.  And I liked that you could get your college robe made there. 

So then we headed back down to London and getting all excited about our trip to Paris the next morning.  When we got to London we were put up in a very very nice hotel right across the street from Hyde Park on Park Lane, which Julian kept telling us was the very best place we could be.

 And just as we were going to check in, that's when my troubles began.  To start at the beginning, before Sara and I first started our tour, we were each sent, from Globus Tours, a small black booklet type thing that contained our itinerary, luggage labels, name tags, etc. When we got to England, I decided that I didn't like how my passport was flopping around in my purse, so I stuck it in my little case in a very nice little pocket just the right size. Sara kind of questioned me about it and I explained why I was doing it. Well, everything was fine until Edinburgh, when I took the thing out of my purse because I didn't want to carry it with me when I was out shopping and chance losing it. I'm pretty sure I put it on the table in our room along with some other books that were in the hotel room. So, two days later when we arrived at our beautiful hotel in London for our last night in the country, it was nowhere to be found, and I had a terrible feeling that I had left it behind in Edinburgh. I went through all my luggage again and again, and even Sara tore through it, thinking it just had to be there. After facing the the fact that the passport was not going to magically appear, I had to get down to work fast and find out what I would have to do to get a new one. Our hotel people, Abdel, Benny, James, and Maria all went out of their way to help me. Abdel got the number of the US embassy and I called only to be told by an answering machine that because it was the weekend no one was available to help me. Abdel also called our last two hotels in York and Edinburgh and asked them to please look for the passport, and call back with any news. On Saturday night I went to bed thinking that we should try and go to Paris anyway the next day, and get to the US embassy there, but  during the night, I had a change of heart and decided that we needed to stay in London and use the connections we already had, namely our English speaking hotel staff. Also the US embassy was only a ten minute walk away from our hotel, which proved to be invaluable. Saturday morning, I went down to the concierge desk to talk to Abdel, and found Benny (aka Betty) a new concierge. I started to tell him my sad story, and I started to cry and I couldn't talk at all. He was very kind and handed me a box of tissues. After the crying, I explained the problems, first, I had lost my passport, second,  the US embassy was not open on the weekends, third, I was supposed to be on a train to Paris right then, and fourth, I needed to stay in the hotel another night, but didn't have a reservation and wasn't sure I could afford to stay there even if they had the room. Benny was so kind and told me he would find me another hotel, but it wouldn't be close to the embassy. He said I could stay at their hotel another night and they would let me have the rate I first had, that they would give me free internet access so I could get my documents printed and email and get information and that we could have a free breakfast (breakfast was amazing) too, if I would just stay put for another night. I told him yes that is what we would do.
The night before I had researched on the Internet, that I would have to have two forms, filled out and passport pictures to get a new passport. Sunday am after talking to Benny, Sara and I went out looking for a place where I could get passport pictures. Unfortunately, everything was closed so we headed back to the hotel and I got on the Internet to find out about church times and places. I found the London Hyde Park ward at 1:00 pm so we put on our skirts and walked about two miles to the chapel.

 Church was great, just what we needed. The speakers were wonderful speaking about missionary work. The musical number calmed my soul, and I felt more at peace. After church, we again went out to find a place for passport pictures. We finally got the pictures, and then headed back to the hotel where I fell asleep for about 15 hours, not fifteen minutes, fifteen hours. The next morning  both Sara and I went to the embassy located in Grosvenor Square but were turned away and told to go back to our hotel and call for an appointment. So we went back to the hotel, I called and got an appointment for 9:00 am. At nine I was at the embassy again, and I had to go through security before entering the building. While I was waiting out front of the embassy, and let me just add this, I don't like the looks of our embassy in London.  It's big and ugly and just very American looking in an  cool looking place in the middle of posh London. And in front, it has a small security building where they let in only one person at a time. 

 So, while I was a waitin' right at the place where you can see those people standing in the picture above I met a young man who told me that he too had either lost his passport or it was stolen.  Either way, it was gone and he was supposed to be on a plane to Dubai right then.  He then went into the embassy and a family with father, mother, daughter and grandmother came and waited behind me.  I asked them what had happened to them.  The daughter had been robbed of her purse as they were checking into their hotel and her passport was in her purse.  Then another couple came and I asked them also what had happened to them.  The lady told me she was robbed at her hotel also as she was checking in.  They stole all her money ($1,500.00) her credit cards, her passport, her car keys, her home keys, her presents and souvenirs from Russia where she had been touring, her camera, her cell phone, pretty much everything.  And she was supposed to be on her way home to Birmingham Alabama in just a few hours.  Then another couple came looking worse than all of the rest of us.  This couple were on their way from the U.S. to Israel, with a day layover in London.  After getting back out to the airport, the security checking their passports told them they could not go on because their passports only had six months till they expired and you can't go to Israel on a passport with less than six months.  Who knew?  They were freaked out.  So we were all at the embassy early on Monday morning trying to get new passports.  Until that moment, I thought I was the only one who had such misfortunes, and after hearing from all of these other people, I realized that I was in a much better situation than they were, at least I hadn't been robbed.  When I was finally admitted into the embassy, I had to go through security.  I had brought my camera because I wanted to get a picture of the inside of the embassy, but they wouldn't let me take any kind of electronic anything into the embassy.  They checked my bag three times to get it all clear.  Then I had to walk clear around to the other side of the building to get in with guards  stationed with machine guns all around!   At the front desk I was given a number and was told to wait in another room until my number was called. I waited about twenty minutes and while I was waiting the other people showed up who had also had passport troubles.  I went over to the lady who had had everything stolen to talk to her and show her a little sympathy.  She started to talk and then she just broke down and sobbed.  I put my arms around her and told her I she would be OK.  I knew exactly how she was feeling. I told her she had a lot of people that were willing to help her out.  She was so scared of being left by her tour group alone in a foreign country.  Then they called my number and I had to give them my forms and pictures. Then I paid for the new passport. Then I waited some more and talked to the lady again and the couple who were trying to get to Israel.   Then I was called up again to the window and there was a young man I talked to. He asked me how I was doing and then said, "so you're from Ashton, Idaho? He said it in such a way that it made me pause and I asked him if he knew where Ashton was. He said yes, he used to come to Ashton every year with his dad to cut firewood and they always stopped at the Frost Top to get a Rootbeer float.  I asked him where he was from and he said, "Ririe, Idaho."  That made me start to cry.  Ririe is even smaller than Ashton.  He said when he saw my form, he told everybody that he wanted to be the one to handle my emergency passport application.  He told them he had to see the lady from Ashton, Idaho.  That made me cry even more.   Then I had to swear that everything I had told him was true. Then a little more waiting, and talking to the other people and I had my new passport.  It is an emergency passport and so I can't travel on it, I just have to submit it with another application and I will get a regular new passport.  So I practically ran back to the hotel to tell Sara we could leave for Paris as soon as possible. So we got ready and checked out of the hotel and got a taxi to take us to St. Pancras Station.

  Huge place in the middle of London and where we purchased our tickets for the Eurostar to Paris.  Sadly, we had to purchase new tickets, but we were on our way, finally out of London.

The moral of this story is; keep your passport close, on your person if possible, check for it every few hours and don't let anyone steal it from you.  Make copies of your passport pages and keep them in your suitcase.   When traveling abroad, it is the most important item you have. It is like the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. You search high and low for it when you lose it and when it is found there is much rejoicing. Or as in my case, when I got a new one, there was much rejoicing.